Supporting Our Mission

There are scholarship schemes in many of our schools in California, Ghana and Nigeria to help students from poor families to pay their tuition and get books for their studies. Also a few of our schools are situated in rural areas or in minority communities to ensure that children from these communities have access to a good standard of education. Such schools are located in Oku in Ghana, Ijio in western Nigeria, and some rural villages in northern Nigeria. Some of our St Louis schools also reach out to and help neighbouring schools that do not have the same access to facilities for education.
An example of this is the ‘Bridge of Care’ initiative in Louisville Itele Nigeria, where the students and their parents donate towards a feeding programme for children in neighbouring primary schools.

The ‘Ajosepo’ project of St Genevieve’s, Belfast, is another example of this partnership approach, where the children in our kindergarten school in Dawhan, Ethiopia benefit from a daily feeding programme sponsored by the project.

The Sisters of St Louis are on the board of the South Central Los Angeles Ministry Project (SCLAMP), which focuses on high-risk women and children – mainly economically poor immigrants – offering them early childhood education, family literacy programs, ESL (English as a Second Language) classes, and workshops on parenting, nutrition and self-esteem.

The Mater Dei Centre, Akure, Nigeria, offers vocational training to young women in sewing, knitting, hairdressing, catering and hotel management, soap making, and computer literacy, to prepare them for employment and self-reliance. There are three sewing schools in Ghana where the sisters teach young women sewing skills and fashion design to allow them to set up businesses, giving them self-reliance and independence.

Our sisters in Dawhan, Ethiopia, have set up a Women Empowerment Centre, where women learn embroidery and sewing.

Some of our sisters work at Bakhita Villa, a safe house for victims of trafficking established by Patricia Ebegbulem SSL in Lagos, Nigeria. The sisters in Bakhita Villa help to rescue and rehabilitate victims of human trafficking who receive counselling, take computer classes, and build skills they need for their new lives as part of their rehabilitation. The sisters also give workshops to schools and various organizations to raise awareness on the issue of trafficking.

Our hospitals in Benin, Ghana and Nigeria are situated in rural areas and they focus on maternal and child welfare, as well as attending to other sick patients. We also operate outreach programmes in the rural areas of Ghana and Nigeria. Some sisters also minister to people with physical and intellectual disabilities in Oka and Ilu Ireti Leprosarium in western Nigeria. The St Louis College of Nursing Sciences in Zonkwa, northern Nigeria, trains midwives and nurses who work in many states across the country after their training. Our sisters also work in the Eye Clinics of the hospitals in Pramso, Ghana, and Iseyin, Nigeria.

In St Louis House, Belfast, Ireland, the sisters give pastoral training to young people, preparing them to take up leadership positions in the church and society in the future.

The community in the Foundation House in Juilly is engaged with some of the pupils in Cours Bautain and in the Parish through catechism classes and animation of Masses. In Meaux and Grigny in France, the sisters are involved in pastoral work with the young people of these parishes. In many parishes in Ghana and Nigeria, our sisters run Sunday schools and catechism classes for those preparing for Baptism, Communion and Confirmation.

Many of our retired sisters are involved in the Fáilte Isteach, (Irish for ‘Welcome In’) project in Monaghan, Ireland. This is a community project involving predominantly older volunteers welcoming migrants through conversational English classes. In addition to offering free weekly English conversation classes, it also has other activities, including local history talks and céili dancing.

In England, one of our sisters works in the area of advocacy with the Domestic Migrant Workers, so that they can organize themselves in a way that ensures that their rights are honoured and respected by the government and their employers.

Our sisters in Brazil cofounded and work in the AAVE Project in Goiânia, which was established in 1995 to work with people living with HIV/AIDS, and to offer information and education in relation to HIV/AIDS.

Our sisters in Lagos, Nigeria, visit the inmates of Lagos State Ministry of Youth and Social Development in Majidun, Ikorodu, on a weekly basis, to serve them food, clothes and other supplies. The rehabilitation centre was set up by Lagos State in 1970, to hold people who have been arrested for begging on the streets of Lagos. Many of the beggars have intellectual or physical disabilities, and are detained until they are able to pay fines of roughly 15,000 Naira or get in touch with their relatives to bail them out. In the centre, the beggars and youths learn new vocational skills to help their employability. Our sisters also actively work to help reunite the inmates with their relatives.

In Uromi, Nigeria, the sisters run a home for the elderly who are poor and have been neglected by their families.

Our charism Sint Unum makes us very aware of the interconnectedness and relationship between all creatures great and small. Therefore one of the strong pillars of our education programmes is promoting the spirituality of the care of the environment and sustainability of our universe. We collaborate with people of other faiths, or of no faith, to develop the consciousness of celebrating and promoting the unity in diversity of all creatures and living out the moral and ethical responsibility of caring for the earth and especially the poor who are affected by the degradation and pillaging of the earth’s resources and ecosystems.

Through ongoing development of our sisters, we tap into the growing global awareness of the dignity and significance of the whole community of life and the desire to work together with others for oneness, reconciliation and to eradicate the systemic injustices of our world, which threaten both current and future generations.
We also engage with local communities to promote agricultural projects to combat food insecurity in some of the countries where we work.